From the Fire Temple to the Mosque: the religious urban landscape in Late Antique Ērānšahr

Abstract

This paper is an analysis of the change in urban spaces in the former Sasanian empire after the Arab-Muslim conquest. How events shaped the population’s life is reflected by how urban society shaped the spaces within the city. Paradigmatic of this is the case of religious spaces. In a syncretic empire such as the Sasanian Ērānšahr (224–650 CE), places of worship were not limited to fire altars and temples, there were also churches and synagogues as vital parts of the religious environment. According to the archaeological and historiographic attestations, religious spaces in Sasanian times were prevalent in a rural dimension. In 650 CE, the empire was turned upside down by the Arab-Muslim conquest and the transition period to a unified Islamic society is known as Islamization. This event is often described as a rupture; however, it can be better represented as acculturation because of the cultural exchange taking place during the conversion and the elaboration of Islamic social institutions. One of the primary marks of this process includes constructing new religious urban spaces, the mosques both inside and outside city walls. Religious spaces marked both the territory and the identity of the people inhabiting it. However crucial to the construction of mosques, is a parallel shift of the religious space from a rural to an urban environment.